If you have made my honey garlic chicken thighs and realized you’ve never fallen in love with a recipe so hard before, this recipe is for you. It’s nearly identical to the previous recipe, but it uses chopped pork tenderloin.
How to Make Honey Garlic Pork with Tenderloin
This is the easiest method for making a thick crust on pieces of meat. Just coat the chopped pork in cornstarch and then dip in beaten egg. That’s it! Egg does something magical when it’s fried in hot oil, making the crust puff up and stick to the meat very well. If frying scares you, don’t be scared! This recipe is just a quick fry on both sides, so you don’t have to worry about cooking the pork all the way through. Just pan-fry on both sides until the crust is set, and then we’ll bake it the rest of the way in the oven. We’re making our side dish right on the same pan as the honey garlic pork. Just add chopped broccoli florets (not frozen, fresh) to the same pan as the pork before it goes in the oven. They have the same cooking time. Meanwhile, make some rice by either using your rice cooker or microwaving a bowl of instant rice.
The Ingredients
Pork Tenderloin. We need 1.5 pounds of pork tenderloin. Usually, they’re sold two per package, so just freeze any leftover tenderloin. You can also make my crockpot pork tenderloin with the other one. Garlic. Three large cloves of fresh garlic, finely minced. Honey. One quarter cup of honey, any variety of honey is fine, as long as it isn’t flavored or very strong (like buckwheat honey). Soy Sauce. Two tablespoons of soy sauce. You can use regular or low sodium, your choice. Ketchup. Just two tablespoons of ketchup thickens the sauce and brings some sweetness. Cornstarch. Instead of rolling the pork tenderloin in flour, we’re using cornstarch. Cornstarch puffs up in the oil and makes a super thick and crispy crust. Eggs. Two beaten eggs is the second (and final) ingredient to make a crisp crust on the meat. When eggs hit hot oil for frying, the batter instantly puffs up. You are going to want to use this cornstarch plus egg combination on anything you fry! Oil. We need about 1 cup of any type of neutral oil for frying. This can be canola oil, vegetable oil, avocado oil, or any oil without a lot of flavor. For serving: It’s entirely optional, but I like to serve this honey garlic pork with broccoli florets and freshly cooked rice.
The Instructions
First, preheat the oven to 375-degrees Fahrenheit, and have a large baking sheet ready. Chop the tenderloin into bite-size pieces with a very sharp knife. *Please note that the nutritional information is off because it assumes all of the frying oil is absorbed by the meat, but this is not the case!
